Editorial: United States must act to stop ISIL

In 2001, in the aftermath of al-Qaida’s 9-11 attacks, this newspaper supported the invasion of Afghanistan to put a stop to its ability to serve as a training base and launching pad for terrorists. In 2003, the Monitor’s editors believed that the risk of becoming stuck in a Vietnam-like quagmire outweighed the alleged risk presented by Saddam Hussein, and the paper opposed the invasion of Iraq.

Today, like Afghanistan before it, Iraq is in danger of becoming a base for a terrorist organization that’s far more fanatical and brutal than al-Qaida – the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant.

The group’s existence, and its goal of creating a fundamentalist Islamic caliphate on its captured lands, means the United States may have already become embroiled in its third Iraq war. We hate to say it, but combating ISIL and eliminating its ability to spawn acts of global terror may again require American boots on the ground.

ISIL forces augmented by Sunni veterans of Saddam Hussein’s security force are engaged in what amounts to genocide, killing Muslims who didn’t convert to their crazed vision of Islam. ISIL fighters forced 40,000 Yazidis, members of an ancient ethnic group, to flee to a mountaintop or face death. The group’s brutality is a purposeful attempt to intimidate and make resistance seem futile.

This week, the world shuddered when an Australian Muslim fighting in Iraq posted a photo of his 7-year-old son. The boy was smiling like a figure in a Norman Rockwell painting while holding the severed head of a supposed ISIL enemy.

President Obama brought U.S. troops home from Iraq in 2011 after nine years of a nation-building effort that’s still more likely to fail than succeed.

Earlier this summer, he sent several hundred American armed forces members to Iraq as advisers.

On Friday, U.S. planes began dropping relief supplies to the trapped Yazidi refugees and began bombing ISIL forces when they could do so with little danger of killing civilians. In one maddening sortie, American planes dropped American bombs on an American artillery piece ISIL captured from fleeing Iraqi forces.

ISIL is a terrorist group with a well-trained army, experienced leaders, captured territory that includes oil wells and Iraq’s biggest dam and an extremist ideology that’s attracting Muslim fanatics from around the world.

Arming the Kurds in northern Iraq may allow their disciplined forces to keep ISIL at bay or even push it back, but we have little confidence in the rest of Iraq’s armed forces. Iraq’s government is in a transition that could yet lead to civil war, and its army, unassisted, does not appear to be a match for ISIL forces.

Thousands of New Hampshire residents served in Iraq and Afghanistan and many will carry their scars, both physical and emotional, to the grave.

We are loath, as we suspect Obama is, to put more American lives at risk. That shouldn’t be done for further attempts at nation-building. But preventing the creation of a terrorist juggernaut that can threaten the security, not just of the United States but of every nation, is a different story. ISIL has to be stopped. If Iraqi forces can’t do it, other nations, the United States included, will have to do the job.

The Concord Monitor is starting to sound like the "Neocon Times". First you support the transfer of military gear and guns to Concord via the bearcat program and now you are using dredged up domino theory logic (Vietnam war) to explain you support for another endless war.

BestPresidentReagan wrote:

08/14/2014

Ya forgot to add that ISIS has $$$$ Ka-Billions. A reader might ask this awful Rag to explain that. HEADLINE " Report: Kurds offered to help stop ISIS months ago — but didn’t hear back from the White House" yup Obama didn’t respond and he and HILLARY are 100% responsible for the disaster that has become of the Middle East. ISIS could have been stopped in its infancy without US troops but democrats dropped the ball - AGAIN.

GWTW wrote:

08/14/2014

Suggest we send the Kurds the Bearcat to help with the daily challenges presented by ISIS.

Hunter_Dan wrote:

08/15/2014

That and about a dozen A-10 warthogs.

BestPresidentReagan wrote:

08/15/2014

sorry to report NObama has killed the warthog program against the advice of military experts

TCB wrote:

08/17/2014

Warthogs - sounds like the right tool for this. Like WWII Germany and so many other examples - if intervention had taken place early, working in concert with responsible locals, the situation might have been managed with a small number of resources and soldiers/civilians in danger or dead. While Obama campaigns for more money, swills beer, plays pool & golf, incites increased social problems and vacations. Move over Jimmy Carter - you have been replaced

xalaskan wrote:

08/18/2014

That's a very good idea. This administration was to send multiple F-16's to Iraq and to date only one has been delivered. The A-10 Warthog is an easy jet to fly and proven technology but no so advanced that Iran could be bothered with. There are many sitting in aircraft boneyards. Time to refurb them and get them over there.That way "we" don't need to support Iraq with aour forces.!!!